Attributions, Essay Example

An attribution is a quality, property or feature defining a person. In a society, ones qualities are essential, and ones behavior can be explained by assigning attributes to them. The root of this essay is psychology. Several factors play an important role while assigning an attribute to a certain behavior. Experience and knowledge are one of these key factors. Every day in life, we tend to explain occurrences and the reasons that made us act the way we acted.

Attributions can be classified into two categories, explanatory and interpersonal attributions. Explanatory attributions enable one to understand what is happening around them. An interpersonal attribution occurs when more than one individual is involved. It seeks to explain why an individual acted in a manner. Explanatory style is an essential aspect of psychology, and it pin points the reasons individuals explain it to themselves for certain happenings be it positive or negative. There are three components of explanatory style, personal, permanent and pervasive.

Pessimistic explanatory style is exhibited in individuals who think terrible events occur due to them. This tends to affect many aspects of their lives and is mostly associated with depression and physical ailments. Others exhibit optimistic explanatory style they tend to blame others for bad happenings and that they will end soon. Such individuals do not let these events have a big impact on their lives. Studies by Abramson et al showed likelihood of depression, attributing negative outcomes to internal stable global causes, when terrible happenings happened to them. There are three dimensions of explanatory styles, external or internal, international or precise, and unbalanced or steady. These dimensions define how an individual is bound to act and for what reasons.

References

Abramson et al. (1984). Attribution style and the generality of learned helplessness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46(3), 681-687.